Tag: Gaza

Some columns are perfect, and this one, by Daniel Greenfield, is one of those. Here is a small part, but please go read it all

It has two types of people; the Israelis who live in posh houses stocked with all the latest appliances and the Arabs who live in crumbling shacks that are always in danger of being bulldozed. The Israelis are fanatical, the Arabs are passionate. The Israelis are hate-filled, while the Arabs are embittered. The Israelis have everything while the Arabs have nothing.

Avoid mentioning all the mansions that you pass on the way to interviewing some Palestinian Authority or Hamas bigwig. When visiting a terrorist prisoner in an Israeli jail, be sure to call him a militant, somewhere in the fifth paragraph, but do not mention the sheer amount of food in the prison, especially if he is on a hunger strike. If you happen to notice that the prisoners live better than most Israelis, that is something you will not refer to. Instead describe them as passionate and embittered. Never ask them how many children they killed or how much they make a month. Ask them what they think the prospects for peace are. Nod knowingly when they say that it’s up to Israel.

Weigh every story one way. Depersonalize Israelis, personalize Muslims. One is a statistic, the other a precious snowflake. A Muslim terrorist attack is always in retaliation for something, but an Israeli attack is rarely a retaliation for anything. When Israeli planes bomb a terrorist hideout, suggest that this latest action only feeds the “Cycle of Violence” and quote some official who urges Israel to return to peace negotiations– whether or not there actually are any negotiations to return to.

Center everything around peace negotiations. If Israel has any domestic politics that don’t involve checkpoints and air strikes, do your best to avoid learning about them. Frame all Israeli politics by asking whether a politician is finally willing to make the compromises that you think are necessary for peace. Always sigh regretfully and find them wanting. Assume that all Israelis think the same way. Every vote is a referendum on the peace process. A vote for a conservative party means that Israelis hate peace.

And these folks are a great example. they are completely misinformed, indoctrinated, and believe in some of the most absurd ideals imaginable.

Take the example of the lady who claims that a nation only has a right to defend itself if its attacker has an army. What level of idiocy is she on? She is right there with the folks that say Israel responds with unequal force. Note these people never ask why Hamas continues to attack a far more powerful opponent. Nor do they ever sit and ponder one fact. If Israel is the bad guy, and possesses the ability to flatten Gaza any time they wish, why don’t they? Do these buffoons doubt that Hamas would USE a nuclear weapon against Israel if they possessed one? Are they not aware that Israel HAS hundreds of nuclear weapons, yet has never used one despite the number of attacks on their nation?

The Middle East Media Research (MEMRI) published Thursday a translation of a new Hamas internet campaign to provide guidelines for Gaza’s social media users. According to MEMRI, the Hamas Interior Ministry has instructed Gazans to use Facebook and Twitter to “play their part in strengthening the home front and properly convey information worldwide.” The guidelines in fact instruct social media users to mislead the public and propagate disinformation worldwide.The interior ministry’s “Be Aware — Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign” centers around an instructional video and posters published on the ministry’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Gazans are taught, first and foremost, to refer to all terrorists as innocent civilians.“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank,” the guidelines state. “Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.” Mainstream media outlets would do well to remember this when quoting distorted reports from Gaza of civilian casualties.The guidelines go on to tell Facebook and Twitter users how to spin Hamas terrorist activity aimed at harming Israeli civilians to appear legitimate.

Something important is missing from the New York Times‘s coverage of the war in Gaza: photographs of terrorist attacks on Israel, and pictures of Hamas fighters, tunnels, weaponry, and use of human shields.

It appears the Times is silently but happily complying with a Hamas demand that the only pictures from Gaza are of civilians and never of fighters. The most influential news organization in the world is thus manufacturing an utterly false portrait of the battle—precisely the portrait that Hamas finds most helpful: embattled, victimized Gaza civilians under attack by a cruel Israeli military.

A review of the Times‘s photography in Gaza reveals a stark contrast in how the two sides are portrayed. Nearly every picture from Israel depicts tanks, soldiers, or attack helicopters. And every picture of Gaza depicts either bloodied civilians, destroyed buildings, overflowing hospitals, or other images of civilian anguish. It is as one-sided and misleading a depiction of the Gaza battle as one can imagine.

Today’s Times photo essay contains seven images: three of Gaza civilians in distress; one of a smoke plume rising over Gaza; and three of the IDF, including tanks and attack helicopters. The message is simple and clear: the IDF is attacking Gaza and harming Palestinian civilians. There are no images of Israelis under rocket attack, no images of grieving Israeli families and damaged Israeli buildings, no images of Hamas fighters or rocket attacks on Israel, no images of the RPG’s and machine guns recovered from attempted Hamas tunnel infiltrations into Israel.

Frankly the job of the media should be taken seriously by that media. The job of the media in a war is to tell the story of that war. Our media is not doing that. Instead they are carrying the message that Hamas, terrorists, wishes them to carry

“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”

Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows the proudly self-declared raison d’etre of Hamas: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.

Apologists for Hamas attribute the blood lust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling die-hard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.

And there was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.

Go read it all. Read it to your friends, especially read it to anyone who buys the lies the far left tells about this “conflict”. Israel desires peace, it has done everything it can to achieve peaceful coexistence, to reach that two-state solution. For those efforts, Israel has had thousands of rockets launched at it from areas it willingly withdrew from. There will be no peace as long as Hamas exists, that is just the plain, unvarnished truth. Israel trying to reach peaceful coexistence with terrorists who are hell bent on destroying Israel is a no win for Israel. There is no peace with barbarians who love death more than the civilized love life.

Here is one more piece of moral clarity. The only way in which a nation can reach peace with a neighbor intent on its destruction is to achieve complete military victory over that neighbor. Restraint will fail. Appealing to the better angels of the nature of Hamas? Please. Pursuing the morally bankrupt Leftist ideal of “proportional” war? Nothing could be more cruel and wasteful. Their is only one solution. Israel must unleash the dogs of war and end this once and for all. Yes, the “International Community” will howl. I say let them howl. They are buffoons who have no sense of clarity, or of reality. They are the same types of fools who allowed Hitler to rise. And they have yet to remember that what stopped Hitler, and Mussolini, and Japan was not restraint or proportional war. It was complete and total military victory!

A mixture of ignorant fools who have no clue about what is really going on over there. These people have swallowed the Kool-Aid Hamas sells. Israel blocks no legitimate aid to Gaza, only weapons that they know will be used against Israel for example. And a mix of pro-terrorist scum as well. The most fascinating thing I keep hearing is that the fight is unfair because Israel has far better weapons or because the rockets Hamas fires are not really dangerous. I would like to ask these people if they would be OK with Israel defending itself if it used the same weapons as Hamas does. Their heads might explode if they actually had to think about that one.

This war is as morally clear as wars get. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty, and no freedom of speech or press. In a nutshell, Hamas is a violent, fascistic organization.

Israel, meanwhile, is one the world’s most humane states — not to mention a democracy that is so tolerant that Arab members of its parliament are free to express admiration for Hamas.

Over the past decade, Hamas had launched thousands of rockets into Israel with one aim: to kill and maim as many Israeli citizens as possible — Israelis at work, at play, asleep in their homes, in their cars. Finally, Israel responded by killing Ahmed al-Jabari, the chief organizer of Hamas’s violence — the Hamas “military commander” as he was known among Palestinians.

In other words, an evil entity made war on a peaceful, decent entity, and the latter responded.

How has the New York Times reported this?

On Friday, on its front page, the Times featured two three-column-wide photos. The top one was of Gaza Muslim mourners alongside the dead body of al-Jabari. The photo below was of Israeli Jews mourning alongside the dead body of Mira Scharf, a 27-year-old mother of three.